Search

The year 2022 saw three Scandinavian films – Loving Adults, Black Crab and Troll – place highly on Netflix's lists of the most popular non-English language films on the service globally. These were led by Troll, a Norwegian feature that was fully financed by Netflix itself and branded as an 'original' film, which went on to become the most popular non-English language film ever on the platform. Using the popularity of these films and other Nordic titles on the world's leading subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) platform as a point of departure, this article investigates the changing industrial landscape for film production and distribution in the region in light of the influence that streaming platforms are having therein. The focus is on a detailed case study of the integrated studio SF Studios, which produced two of these three landmark films as well as numerous others that were released as Netflix original movies between 2020 and 2023. In addition to illuminating the business and creative practices of both SF and Netflix, the article argues that deals such as these are fomenting greater artistic diversity in Scandinavia by opening up distribution pathways and production resources for popular genre films from the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are all spectators of the times to varying extents. With the commencement of the twenty-first century, our spectator experience began to transform, becoming more scattered, divergent, and unsettled in response to technological advancement and the decline of consensus around social values, cultural meanings, and political agendas in the face of changes. In post-handover Hong Kong, a breach of meaning has been cumulatively caused by divided opinions on priorities (e.g. economic, democratic) and intensified by the contested narratives around history, identity, and reality. In the aftermath of the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti-ELAB) Movement, a discursive construction of authority and legitimation has taken place in legislative affairs, a renewed school curriculum, and official speeches, among other organized patterns of action. Against this backdrop, this paper will focus on the spectatorship of trauma that has been generated by community screenings and documentary filmmaking. Two case studies will be presented in terms of their distance (distant vis-à-vis immersive) from the epicentre of these traumatic events. The first case study will explore the spectatorship of visual trauma, in which authoritarian experiences were transmitted through social movement-themed documentaries (e.g. Ukraine's Winter on Fire) and drama films (e.g. South Korea's 1987 and A Taxi Driver) that gained popularity and stirred up noise in Hong Kong in the lead-up to 2019. The second case study will explore traumatic responses through bodily reactions to pain and suffering as captured in post-2019 Hong Kong cinema. On the whole, the paper will demonstrate how viewing experiences embody shared and individualized responses (e.g. resistance, resilience, retreat) and how understanding spectatorship allows us to discern the social sentiments, cultural implications, and affects generated at a particular time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of the challenges and development of Kurdish cinema, focusing on the production, distribution, and screening of Kurdish films. It explores the historical and political context of the Kurdish people, who have faced suppression and denial of their cultural rights in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. The article highlights the efforts of Kurdish filmmakers in different regions to create and promote Kurdish cinema, mentioning specific films and filmmakers that have contributed to the representation of Kurdish identity and struggles. It also discusses the emergence of Kurdish film festivals in Europe as important platforms for Kurdish filmmakers to gain recognition and educate non-Kurdish audiences about the Kurdish national struggle. [Extracted from the article]

Film festivals have been understood as part of a global network where each event acts as a node. Their position depends on their relevance and hierarchies within the circuit. However, this notion of a network does not necessarily reflect the establishment of national or local circuits linked to small nations and cinemas. Therefore, this article discusses the creation of local film festival circuits in Latin America based on film culture and cinephilia. I use the water cycle as a reference in order to identify that national circuits in Latin America work around a small group of festivals that act as condensers of resources, which are distributed to the rest of the circuit through different relationships: sublimation and deposition (film historiography); runoff (influence on smaller and local festivals); infiltration (film education); and evaporation, where the processed and transformed resources bring new films and new filmmakers to nurture the condenser film festivals to start this cycle all over again.

The Film Circulation project is the first quantitative research in film festival studies that analyses the complex network relations of the sector using festival run data. This paper provides a detailed account of the project’s dataset, including decisions on data model, collection, structuring, and enhancement. It also documents the dataset’s sources, structures, limitations, and potential, with the goal of making the project more accessible and encouraging further collaborations in festival-related data analytics.

Film festivals play an important role in the construction and circulation of not only individual films but entire taxonomies of cinema, from their “discovery of new waves” (Elsaesser 2005: 99) to their production of “hegemonic …canons” (Vallejo, 2020: 158). The effects of this taxonomical power are felt across filmmaking, criticism, and scholarship, foregrounded in renewed calls to decolonize film festivals and film culture more broadly (Dovey and Sendra 2022[forthcoming], Shambu 2019). This article mobilizes and adapts “New Lacanian” theories of ideology critique to propose a methodology for studying the ways in which film festivals construct meaning for films and, cumulatively, entire canons. Outlining concepts such as the festival apparatus, the festival paratext, and the cinematic Real, I trace the coordinates of a three-tier critical procedure that brings into dialogue festivals’ operational and material contexts, their representation of themselves and their films, and the unruly, aesthetic qualities of the films that festivals exhibit. I demonstrate the application of this approach to a recent cause célèbre of Italian migration cinema, Fire at Sea, its awarding and representation at the 2016 edition of the Berlin International Film Festival instantiating the enduring legacy of Neorealism and a “brutal humanist” stance directed towards refugees in the new millennium (Schoonover 2012). Moving between theoretical discussions and the application of this method of ideology critique, I demonstrate how we might interrogate structures of meaning implicit within film festivals’ rhetorical operation, offering a ground from which to better understand film festivals and, if desired, advocate for change.

The international circulation of audiovisuals, films and TV series constitutes an important field of research, especially in the European context, historically characterized by a limited ability of cultural and media products to cross national borders and obtain success in other non-national markets. Italy suffers from a traditional difficulty in exporting its media content, with the exception of films that manage to earn a kind of “prestige value” thanks particularly to festivals and awards (such as the Oscars), and a few other exceptions. During the 2000s, however, and in particular in the last decade, there were signs of change, that affected particularly series production more than films: titles such as Romanzo criminale – La serie, Gomorrah – La serie, The Young Pope/The New Pope, Suburra – La serie, My brilliant friend, Devils, to name the most notable, seem to radically change the attitude of the national television system to create fictional content intended only for local audiences. At the origin of this mutation, several factors have contributed to restoring the centrality of the audiovisual “made in Italy”. One of the important factors is undoubtedly the emergence, starting in 2008, of an unprecedented production model built by the pay or subscription based TV. This essay analyzes what can be defined as a “Renaissance” of Italian TV fiction and presents an original research dedicated to the role of Italian “premium seriality”.

This article examines the presence of women filmmakers in Spanish independent cinema by assessing the national circulation of their works in the alternative distribution and exhibition circuit where gender studies are almost inexistent. Along with other neighboring countries, independent filmmaking enjoys a growing cultural weight within a national cinema conditioned by digitalization and the domination of multinational corporations in the aftershock of the economic crisis. The study, based on a representative sample to quantify female directors, carries out a cross-sectional examination in three areas within independent film circulation that, in turn, endow them with such status: festivals, specialized VOD platforms and independent film distribution companies with catalogs for release in traditional movie theaters or the cultural sector. The chosen timeframe is 2013-2018, from the moment independent cinema, branded as other cinema, achieves increased visibility, and establishes itself as an alternative to the commercial cinema in Spain up to the most recent year with available data. The research shows that, although there is a more significant proportion of female filmmakers than in commercial production, it continues to be a minority in the 20% range. Such underrepresentation does not only affect the cultural value of women’s work but also raises questions on the nature of a type of independent film practices that lay claim to cultural diversity.

Based on ethnographic research, in this article I suggest that with the consumption of Indian film and film-mediated culture and modernity, India's cultural hegemony and class inequalities in Bangladesh are reinforced. Following Bourdieu's (1984) concept of "distinction," I explain how middle-class values and status are attached to Hindi popular cinema in Bangladesh; as a result, Hindi film and film-mediated culture and modernity are considered to be tasteful, polished, well executed, and technically savvy compared to Bangladeshi commercial films, which are seen as poor people's entertainment. The hegemony of Bollywood films in Bangladesh works through the consumption of the production and representational values that are attached to film's story, music, dance, fashion, and style, as well as the people involved in it. While consuming Bollywood film and film-promoted culture and modernity, the middle class reinforces Indian cultural hegemony, alienating them from Bangladeshi commercial films that they define as low-grade, crass, and lacking in production values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the presence of women filmmakers in Spanish independent cinema by assessing the national circulation of their works in the alternative distribution and exhibition circuit where gender studies are almost inexistent. Along with other neighboring countries, independent filmmaking enjoys a growing cultural weight within a national cinema conditioned by digitalization and the domination of multinational corporations in the aftershock of the economic crisis. The study, based on a representative sample to quantify female directors, carries out a cross-sectional examination in three areas within independent film circulation that, in turn, endow them with such status: festivals, specialized VOD platforms and independent film distribution companies with catalogs for release in traditional movie theaters or the cultural sector. The chosen timeframe is 2013-2018, from the moment independent cinema, branded as other cinema, achieves increased visibility, and establishes itself as an alternative to the commercial cinema in Spain up to the most recent year with available data. The research shows that, although there is a more significant proportion of female filmmakers than in commercial production, it continues to be a minority in the 20% range. Such underrepresentation does not only affect the cultural value of women's work but also raises questions on the nature of a type of independent film practices that lay claim to cultural diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the dossier of the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies devoted to the study of digital cinema in Latin America. First, the text addresses the lack of research on the history of digital cinema in Latin America. Then, it proposes a comprehensive analysis of the digital, in terms of film aesthetics, production, distribution, exhibition, and consumption. At the same time, it establishes a dual axis to account for the changes and continuities generated by digital technology in temporal and spatial terms, within both sub- and supra-national logics. In this way, it emphasises the need to understand digital cinema as connected with previous technological and cultural phenomena such as analogue cinema or magnetic video. It also acknowledges that digital cinema is an extension of several local and global economic and industrial processes that different countries have negotiated in diverse and, at times, antagonistic fashions. Lastly, the article presents the five articles included in this dossier, and a sixth, shorter piece that functions as a critical response to the arguments and points addressed by the contributors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to contribute to uncovering and analyzing film exchanges between the French cinematheque and the cinematheques in Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Montevideo (Uruguay) in the aftermath of World War II. In addition to providing a brief history of the creation of the South American institutions, this article studies specific titles that travelled between these three countries. On the one hand, it explores how films that arrived from the south allowed for the recovery of titles thought to be lost and contributed to the programs of the French cinematheque. On the other hand, it examines how the selection that was sent from the north contributed to both the perpetuation of a canon of classics and the circulation of versions that have an impact on current access and restoration projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While social media potentially changes which films attract public attention, film distributors retain a crucial role as gatekeepers in shaping prevailing conceptions of cinema from Latin American countries. I focus on three distributors outside Latin America to illustrate the evolving conditions of film distribution and how distributors serve a metacultural function to facilitate the circulation of particular films. Distributors act as curators of Latin American cinema and provide a means through which Latin American films acquire a generic or other categorization to pique the interests of transnational consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1978 in Algeria and Tunisia and since 1982 in Morocco, women film-makers have sought to account for the oppression of women, for their struggle for freedom including artistic freedom. For the last ten years, films by women film-makers have become more numerous much more diverse moving away from naturalism and the narratives of emancipation that made the commercial success of Maghrebi films in Europe. Dealing with sexuality is complex because such images are often taboo and transgression may not be liberating for women film-makers who need to find a way to expose the shackles of patriarchy without catering to the pleasure of western audiences keen on orientalist fictions. This article that focuses on more recent films, like Karin Albou's Le Chant des Mariées (2008), Raja Amari's Les Secrets (2010) or even Leila Kilani's Sur la planche (2010), or social films like Nadia Cherabi's L'envers du miroir (2007), Myriam Bakir's Agadir-Bombay (2011), explores national and regional specificities regarding images of sexuality. The goal of this analysis is to understand the terms within which such images that entail sexual pleasure or repression, rape and masturbation may redefine relationships of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how the Spanish cinema's dissolution has been transformed and what it has been transformed into and explores two areas of inquiry namely digital technology and ways in which movies circulate. Topics cited include the circulation of Spanish films, filmmakers and imaginaries in transnational digital contexts and the use of the flexibility of post-production to produce aesthetic connections and a nexus between national narratives and transnational imaginaries.